I'll be the first to admit I'm a sucker for dogs, but I was a little leery when David Wilk's Amazing Dog Stories arrived in the mail. Reading about other people's pets -- whether it's tales of heroism or unbearable cuteness -- really isn't my thing. But the book is fairly short -- just 230 pages, with text in a large font and plenty of photographs -- so I decided to give it my attention.

Based on the title alone, I assumed Amazing Dog Stories would be a collection of, you know, amazing stories about dogs, collected by the author from various sources. Instead, it's a collection of stories about the author's own dogs, of which he has owned several, all of them golden retrievers. They are nice enough vignettes, often heart-warming -- especially if you, like me, and obviously David Wilk, are a dog lover -- but I'm not sure I'd call them "amazing." Mostly, they're just snippets of a life with dogs.

He writes in a casual, conversational style that's affable if not overly polished. The text could have used a careful editor, but there's no doubt his enthusiasm for the topic comes through in spades. And you definitely get a good sense of each dog's personality.

However, it's also a hard-to-ignore fact that most of the tense, sometimes quite dangerous situations he describes -- involving floods, rattlesnakes, bears and the like -- could have been avoided if Wilk didn't let his dogs run around off-leash around swollen creeks and wooded areas where predators are often found. Yeah, I know some pet owners argue that their pets need a certain degree of freedom, but ... well, no, they don't. Take care of your pets, don't take risks just so they can be playful in open spaces and provide you with good stories to tell. You'd think the first time your dog almost drowns or nearly dies of a snakebite, you'd learn that lesson.

Also, the book is about dog stories, and yet Wilk devotes a lot of text to his stepson's murder, the subsequent criminal and civil trials, and his and his wife's emotional state throughout what was assuredly a difficult time. Yes, the facts of the case are quite sad, and the trials themselves are somewhat interesting -- I've sat through enough murder trials as a news reporter to know how simultaneously tedious and fascinating they can be -- but the fact that Wilk and his wife kept themselves sane throughout the process by playing with their dogs at the end of the day doesn't really warrant the inclusion of so much detailed courtroom drama in a book about dogs.

The book provides ample photos of Wilk's various dogs, and they're cute, if not of especially high quality. These are snapshots, and while the subjects are certainly photogenic, they're not taken with any particular skill.

Still, Wilk quite obviously loves his dogs, and his passion for his subject is hard to ignore. I can forgive a lot of sins when a person loves dogs ... but I still can't help but wish he had fewer interesting stories because he kept his dogs safe.